It is evident, therefore, that society cannot be constituted without religion, and that society constituted with religion, and on the basis of religious ideas, requires some agreement in these religious ideas, and the incorporation of some fixed and definite religious principles into its very structure and conformation.
If we consult history, we shall find that no state or perfect society has ever been established on the atheistic principle. Every one that has ever existed has had a religious basis, and all political and social constitutions have proceeded from religious ideas and been founded upon them. The civilization of Christendom in general has received its specific form from the influence of the Christian religion moulding and modifying in the Eastern world its previous and ancient laws, and in the West to a great extent creating a new order out of a pre-existing state of imperfect civilization or semi-barbarism. To this Christendom we belong, and the laws of our republic are a product of this Christian civilization. This cannot be denied, considered as a mere historical fact respecting our origin; for we are the offspring of Christian Europe, and in the beginning distinctly professed to be a Christian people. But it may be said that we have changed, have undergone a political regeneration as a nation, and in the process of transformation have thrown out all religion from our organic constitution as a republic. By our organic constitution and the laws of our republic I intend not merely the federal constitution and laws which bind together the United States, but also the laws and constitutions of the states, the tout ensemble of our common and statute laws of every kind, which form the regulating code of our whole society as one political people. And in regard to this organic law, I affirm that we do not form an exception among human societies to the universal rule I have above laid down, that the state in political society is based on religious ideas.
In support of this proposition, I cite the opinion of a most competent and impartial judge, Prof. Leo, of Halle, and borrow from him a definition of that which constitutes our state religion. This great historian, in the introductory portion of his Universal History, where he is discussing the universal principles which underlie all political constitutions, analyzes in a masterly way the elements of our own system of government; and he points out that which is the religious element, namely, the rule or law of morals, derived from the common law of Christendom, or a certain standard of moral obligation, conformity to which is enforced by the state with all its coercive power. All churches or voluntary associations which include this moral code or religion of the state within their own specific religious law possess complete equality and liberty before the civil law. With their doctrines, rites, regulations, and practices the state does not interfere, and gives them protection from any infringement upon their rights on the part of any private members of the community. But let them, on pretext of doctrine, of ecclesiastical law, of liberty of conscience, or even of any divine revelation, violate by any overt acts [pg 723] the rule of moral obligation recognized by the state, they come into direct collision with her authority, and must suffer the consequences. So far, therefore, as concerns that portion of Christian law, namely, the moral precepts of the Christian religion, which are incorporated into our civil law, all churches are in vital union with the state. Even Jews, because they hold, with Christians, the decalogue; and societies based on purely natural religion, because they hold the law of nature, are in the same vital union, so far, with the state. And beyond this, within the limits which this law sanctions or permits, all these churches or societies are in union with the state, as lawful, voluntary associations over which her protection is extended. But let a Mohammedan community be formed among citizens or resident foreigners, and attempt the introduction of polygamy, our laws require the civil magistrate to interfere and suppress by force this exercise of the privileges granted by their prophet. Let a community of Hindoos, Thugs, or idolaters establish itself within our bounds, and commence any of the murderous practices of those false religions, and the gibbet or the sword would be called on to execute vengeance upon them. We have in our borders the sect of Mormons, whose doctrines and practices are contrary to our fundamental laws and subversive of them. Obviously, we cannot, consistently with our safety, our well-being, or our essential principles of political and social order, tolerate the enormities of Mormonism, much less permit the formation of a Mormon state. The right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, must be exercised in conformity to certain laws, which are to the state as her axioms or first principles, and are held as inviolable. And the exercise of this right, in this due and legitimate manner, must not be hindered by force and violence under any pretext. Therefore no pretence of conscience or religion can avail to cover any violation of law by an individual or a society, or any such infringement on the rights of others as has been just alluded to. All this presupposes that the state recognizes and bases its laws upon certain fixed ideas concerning the rights which God has really granted to men, and the obligations which he has imposed upon them. But this has also been distinctly and expressly declared by a body of men, representing the whole political people of the nascent republic which was afterwards developed into the United States of North America. The declaration was made in the very act which constituted the United Colonies free and independent states, and which was published to the world on the fourth day of July, 1776. In the first sentence of this Declaration of Independence, the Congress affirms that the people of the United States have judged it necessary “to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them.” This august body then proceeds to lay down the foundation and basis of the entire argument of the document, as follows: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men.” It then proceeds to argue that those governments which fail to fulfil this end, and pursue a contrary end by invading and destroying these rights, [pg 724] forfeit their powers; and makes an application of this principle to the casus belli between the colonies and the British crown.
In this most momentous crisis, amid the very birth-pangs of our infant republic, the people of the United States solemnly declared that the origin of all right, all law, all political organization, all government, and specifically of those which constitute the United States a separate political people, is to be found in the lex æterna, the law of God; that is to say, it is in religion. For what is religion? According to Cicero's definition, it is a bond which binds men to God and to each other. This is the very meaning of the word, which comes from ligare, to bind, whence we have the terms ligament, ligature, and obligation. Human right is, therefore, something conferred by God. The right to govern must come from God, for we are created equal, and therefore without any natural right of one over another to give him law. The rights of the governed come from God, and are therefore inviolable; but liberty is the unhindered possession and exercise of the rights conferred by God, under the protection of lawful government; and liberty of conscience is freedom to obey the law of the Creator, and to enjoy the blessings which he has imparted to the creature by that law. These rights and liberties belong to each individual man as a grant from the Creator, which he can maintain in the face of any government, be it that of a monarch, of an aristocracy, or of a majority of the people. If a monarch, or one who executes by delegated power the sovereignty of a majority, invades the right of an individual, he violates a law. This law can be no other than that of the Sovereign Lord of the universe. There is, therefore, a higher law than human law, a higher sovereignty than human sovereignty, to which both governments and the governed are subject and amenable, and which are acknowledged as supreme by this American Republic of which we are citizens. And as another proof of this recognition, I may cite the law of oaths, or the solemn appeal to Almighty God as the Supreme Judge, by which a religious sanction is given to judicial testimony and the engagements of public officers.
There is, therefore, in our republic a religion of the state, but one embodied in civil and political society only, which leaves to citizens perfect freedom to organize churches and act out what they profess to be the dictates of their individual consciences, provided they do not violate the laws which constitute the religion of the state.
Under this law, the Catholic Church possesses in essential matters theoretical liberty and equality of rights with the various religious bodies existing in the country, with some trivial exceptions to be found in the laws of some of the states. To a great extent, this theoretical liberty is also a practical liberty, really possessed and enjoyed, and only occasionally invaded. This is a remark which is quite specially verified in the instance of your own state of Connecticut.
This has not always been the case either here or in other portions of our country. Catholics have not always enjoyed freedom of conscience and liberty of religion. If we go back to the early history of the colonies which became afterwards the United States, we shall find that their founders did not intend to grant that liberty which now exists. In some of these colonies, the Church of England, in others the Church of the Puritans, and in those of Spain and [pg 725] France, which were admitted at a later period, the Catholic Church was the established religion of the state. In all the English colonies the Catholic religion was proscribed and persecuted. The Puritan fathers of New England intended to establish a theocracy. There was a strict union of church and state under their old colonial governments. Only professed members and communicants of the church could vote, and the legislatures regulated the affairs of parishes, and decided doctrinal questions. Our ancestors therefore had a Christian ideal of the state before their minds which they attempted to make an actual reality, and which they dreamed should become the kingdom of Christ our Lord upon the earth which the prophets and apostles foretold. The attempt failed from causes which lay within the bosom of the community itself, and not because of any external force; and the same community which had by tacit agreement or positive statutes enacted the original law combining a specific form of religion with the state, repealed the same by its own free will. In the Puritan state, the first change came about by the multiplication of baptized persons who never became communicants. The number of citizens who were thus deprived of the highest rights of citizenship was felt to be a grave anomaly and inconvenience in a democratic state, and caused the adoption of the half-way covenant. By this arrangement, those baptized persons who publicly acknowledged their baptism were considered as quasi-members of the church, entitled to all political rights. When, in the course of time, the number of unbaptized persons increased, and other sects of Protestantism began to flourish, new changes were brought about by which in the end the connection between the state and the Puritan Church was dissolved. Similar causes produced similar effects in other parts of the country, and, so far as the federal union was concerned, there was obviously from the first an utter impossibility of making any specific form of Christianity the religion of the entire republic. Thus, by the very law which the necessity of the case imposed upon the separate states and the entire federal republic, that liberty of religion became established under which the Catholic Church could come in upon a footing of perfect equality with the other religious denominations. Catholics have not come into New England and Connecticut either to demand religious liberty as a right or to beg toleration as a favor. We have not obtained our rights or privileges by any agitation or revolution stirred up by ourselves in our own interest. The work was done before there was a number of Catholics worth estimating either in Connecticut or New England. It was done by the old manor-born citizens for their own advantage and the welfare of the state.
So also, in regard to the political privileges conceded to foreign-born immigrants. These are, in their nature, distinct and separate from the rights of conscience conceded to Catholics. Yet they have an actual connection, arising from the fact that so very large a proportion of our Catholic citizens are of foreign birth, and so large a proportion of our adopted citizens are of the Catholic religion; and therefore, in the public mind, these two matters are very much blended together, and even confused with each other. It is, therefore, quite fitting that I should speak of the two things in relation with each other. And I remark on this point that the privileges possessed by the [pg 726] Catholics of this state who are of foreign birth, by which they are made equal to the native-born citizens in regard to both religious and political rights, have not been extorted by themselves, but freely conceded for the good of the state and of all citizens generally. The original inhabitants had the power to exclude the Catholic religion from all toleration. They had the power and the right to exclude all foreigners from the privileges of native-born citizens, or to make the conditions of being naturalized more stringent than they now are. They took another course, having in view their own good and the well-being of the state, and Catholics as well as foreigners have profited by it. Catholics have profited by the religious liberty conceded to citizens, which is something essentially distinct from the privileges conceded to residents of foreign origin. And in point of fact, although the extent and prosperity of the church in Connecticut have proceeded principally and in very great measure from the immigration of Irish Catholics into the state, yet its rights, and liberty, and equality do not depend on anything necessarily and essentially but the religious liberty granted to citizens, and which is the birthright of Catholics as well as Protestants who are born on the soil of the republic.
It would be easy to show, in respect to our country at large, that the first beginnings of the Catholic Church have an intertwined radical grasp with the first fibres of national life in our own soil; and that there is a truly glorious Catholic chapter in the history of the United States. We can find something of this even in the history of this state. The first Mass celebrated in Connecticut was said in an open field within the bounds of Wethersfield, by the chaplain of the French troops who came here to aid our fathers in fighting the battle for independence. The first Catholic sermon in English was preached by the Rev. Dr. Matignon, of Boston, in the Centre Congregational Church of Hartford, at the invitation of the Rev. Dr. Strong, the pastor of the church. The first Catholic church was formed at Hartford in 1827, by Mr. Taylor, a respectable citizen of that town, who was a convert, and who organized the few Irish, French, and German Catholic residents in the place into a congregation, which assembled on Sunday for worship. In 1830, Bishop Fenwick, of Boston, a native of Maryland, purchased and blessed a small frame church, over which he placed F. Fitton, a native of Boston, who was the pastor of the entire state, and who is still actively engaged in the duties of the priesthood at Boston. During the first five years of his ministry at Hartford, F. Fitton received eighty adult converts, who, with their families, made a considerable portion of his little flock, since, in 1835, there were only 730 Catholics in the whole state. The first bishop of the diocese of Hartford was a native of New England. The present distinguished prelate who rules the church in Connecticut is a native of Pennsylvania; and of the 150,000 Catholics under his jurisdiction nearly one-half must be natives of the state or of the United States. We have, then, some 67,000 native-born Catholics in this state, most of whom are native-born Yankees.[230] If you [pg 727] wish to see a fair sample of these, you have only to visit St. Patrick's Church at nine o'clock of a Sunday morning, where you will see the church filled with them, and to go into the school-house behind the church any day in the week, where you will find 1,100 of these young Catholic Yankees busily conning their lessons, and learning to love God and their native Columbia. All these have their liberty of conscience and their other rights as citizens secured to them by their birthright, and therefore, on this ground alone, the Catholic Church is equal to the Protestant churches before the law.
And as regards foreign-born citizens, the state having conceded to them equal rights to those of native-born citizens, their conscience or religion is included among these rights. The original concession was a privilege, but, having been once conceded, it has become a right. And it was conceded, as I have said, for the good of the state which conceded it, and in view of a compensation or equivalent which the party of the grantor expected to receive. You did not intrude yourselves upon the soil of the state, or come uninvited to beg food and shelter. You were invited, and that not from motives of pure philanthropy. Doubtless many had a kind and philanthropic feeling in the matter, but the prime and urgent motive was that you were needed and wanted for your labor. You were told that your services were wanted for the upbuilding of the material prosperity of the state, and, as an inducement to come, you were offered citizenship, and with that, freedom to bring your religion with you and enjoy it. This was a favor to you without question; but not a purely gratuitous one. It was something advanced to you, but for which you were expected to make a future compensation. And you have well purchased your rights, not only by what you have done in the peaceful arts of industry, but by fighting for your adopted country and shedding your blood for its integrity and the consolidation of its power. You have fought for the state, and for the United States, and, therefore, the compact has been sealed and made inviolable by your blood.